In Pursuit of Mysteries

Playa Bound

I’m off to the playa in the next couple of minutes. I should be back on Sunday evening.

Insert long frantic scream here

I’m pulling together all of my Burning Man gear since I’m packing out at 4:00 AM on Wednesday morning with a coworker’s wife. We’re taking their van out to the playa and I hope to be there before noon. For any that haven’t left yet, I’m in the Temple of All Gods (TAG), which is camping within the Mad Scientists Collective (MSC) at 3:00 and the Esplanade this year.

I think my load is relatively sane. I have three plastic bins. One has food, another has cooking stuff, cleaning stuff, my shower, odds and ends like that, and the third has my clothes and personal belongings. In addition to these, I’ll have mid-size duffle bag with the tent and tarp inside of it, my sleeping bag and thermarest, and three seven gallon water containers.

I still need to find my old glasses (just in case) and a few other little pieces. I hope to take it all over for packing tomorrow night so I can just arrive Wednesday morning and we can go directly.

I’ll leave you with my happiest Burning Man 2001 picture…

Ice Cream!

It’s Dead, Jim.

The macbook’s hard drive is so toast that I cannot even reinstall the operating system on it. The installer cannot even see it in the system (though I can hear the drive power up and seek). I expect that I can kiss the last month and a half of photos and documents, including articles downloaded from JSTOR for thesis work, goodbye.

I’ve got enough invested in this macbook that I’m going to have to go to the Apple store and have them replace it (or at least the drive). This will either be the second macbook replacement or the second major service issue (depending on if they just replace the drive) in the two months that I’ve had the macbook. I’m beginning to wonder if I should have just kept my little Dell Inspiron that I had back in May. I hadn’t had a hiccup with it and I seem to have monthly issues with the macbook.